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A Halloween Tale: LimeWire and the Deathly Injunction

It's the season of witches, pirates, and Snooki wigs -- so what better time for U.S. district judge Kimba Wood to sentence one of our most notorious pirates to the ranks of the undead, right beside those near-forgotten ghouls Napster and Grokster? As of yesterday, visitors to LimeWire?s website are greeted with the following:

LEGAL NOTICE

This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.

While some news outlets view the injunction as spelling certain death for one of the largest remaining peer-to-peer services, others are saying this isn?t a ?game-changing legal victory? for the music industry?but rather, a (predicted $1 billion +) slap on the wrist that will force LimeWire to ?go legit?.

I am no expert in these kinds of cases (or any kind of case, for that matter) but I view the latter suggestion with some skepticism. Whether or not LimeWire will be able to work out a deal with a very miffed record industry is anybody?s guess, but with an estimated 50 million monthly users who download nearly 3 billion songs a month, ?going legit? is not likely to be an easy feat.

And even if LimeWire evaporates under the sheer burden of monetary damages and trying to comply with increasingly-complex online copyright law, I?m doubtful such hard-fought lawsuits aimed at shutting down large peer-to-peer networks will ever yield the results record companies are hoping for. If history is any indicator of future behavior, Napster was replaced with Grokster was replaced with LimeWire which will be replaced by _________.

Partially underlying my skepticism about record companies ever having their ?We are the Champions? moment, are my own personal experiences with file sharing. It?s been a healthy number of years since I?ve tinkered around with any of the abovementioned services, but as a teenager I remember thinking something along the lines of, ?If this is so readily available to everyone who has the internet, how illegal can it be?? Compounded by my awareness that this was a bad?but somewhat socially condoned?thing to do, was an acute statistical realization that I was more likely to win the lottery than to get caught for downloading a few ABBA songs.

I suppose the end result of all these musings is that I think this injunction is a bit? futile. The world has changed, people share files. Change the file formats, find better ways to monetize your product, but don?t attempt to shut down sharing. Otherwise, where LimeWire is buried, a new?more clever?file sharing service will walk again?

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on October 27, 2010 (boomark / email).